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Updated: June 28, 2025
If it were not so painful a task, my dears, I would give you here some notion of what a London sponging-house was in the last century. Comyn has heard me tell of it, and I have seen Bess cry over the story. Gaming was the king-vice of that age, and it filled these places to overflowing. Heaven help a man who came into the world with that propensity in the early days of King George the Third.
'Twas a long story, as you know, my dears. He lighted his pipe and laid his big hand over mine, and filled my glass, and I told him most of that which had happened to me. But I left out the whole of that concerning Mr. Manners and the Duke of Chartersea, nor did I speak of the sponging-house.
But of this you may like to know that, what with a good father's example, and some small heritage of Puritan decency come down to me from the sound-hearted old Roundhead stock, I won out of that devil's sponging-house, an army in the time of peace, with somewhat less to my score than others had to theirs.
"Pish!" says he impatiently, "plain as day we must sail on the frigate for France, or they imprison us here in Paris we shall be kept dangling by promises, hangers-on and do-nothings till the moneys are all used then " "Then sir?" "Then, active men are dangerous men, and dangerous men may lie safe and quiet in the sponging-house!" "Do we sail in that case?" "Egad, yes! Why not?
He was taken to the sponging-house, and it was there imparted to him that he had better send for two things first of all for money, which was by far the more desirable of the two; and secondly, for bail, which even if forthcoming was represented as being at best but a dubious advantage. 'There's Mrs. Davis, she'd bail you, of course, and willing, said the bailiff. 'Mrs.
And away the two walked together to a sponging-house in Cursitor Street. Charley had been arrested at the suit of Mr. Outerman, the tailor. He perfectly understood the fact, and made no special objection to following the bailiff. One case was at any rate off his mind; he could not now, be his will to do so ever so good, keep his appointment with Norah Geraghty.
Why, otherwise, had she come to the sponging-house? Berating myself: had her affection been other than that of a life-long friendship she would not have come an inch. But why had she made me stay in London? Why had she spoken so to Comyn? What interpretation might be put upon a score of little acts of hers that came a-flooding to mind, each a sacred treasure of memory?
It took some effort to realize, as I waited silently for his attention, that this was the man of whose innermost life I had had so intimate a view. Who had taken me to the humble cottage under Criffel, who had poured into my ear his ambitions and his wrongs when we had sat together in the dingy room of the Castle Yard sponging-house.
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